Richard Severing earned his Bachelor of Music Education Degree from Milton College in 1966 and his Master of Music Degree from UW-Madison in 1969. Over the past forty-five years, Mr. Severing has been very involved in promoting many civic musical organizations. He was co-founder and conductor of the Northern Wisconsin Summer Music Festival and was also founder and conductor of the Lake Mills Civic Chorus. Richard also conducted the Beaver Dam Oratorio Society, and the Harvard Choral Society. He is founder and co-conductor of the Southern Lakes Masterpiece Chorale in Elkhorn, Wisconsin, which is in its thirty-first season. In August 2002 he accepted the position of Director of Music at Cargill United Methodist Church in Janesville, Wisconsin. He is also the artistic director of Choral Union Limited in Janesville, Wisconsin.

Mr. Severing has had the privilege of working with fine musicians such as Dr. Bernhardt H. Westlund, Thomas Sanborn, Duke Ellington, Rudolf Kolisch, Rene Leibowitz, and Otto Werner-Mueller. During his twenty-five years of teaching at Delavan-Darien High School, he and his wife and colleague, Marie Severing, started working together on the concept of cooperative concerts. This was, for them, the beginning of the concept of promoting “singing as a life-time sport” and the vision of cooperation not competition between schools.

Richard Severing also taught numerous music courses at the University of Wisconsin-Rock County from 2009-2010 and joined the music department at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater for the 2010-11 school year teaching Choral Methods, Class Voice, Vocal Jazz Ensemble, and Men’s Choir.